In data storage systems, multiple copies of the same data may be stored in multiple locations. For example, in an electronic mail (e-mail) system, there may be ten instances of the same two-megabyte (MB) file attachment, which may result in twenty MB of memory space being used when the e-mail platform is backed up. To decrease the amount of memory space utilization, a data deduplication process may be used to identify multiple instances of the same data and store just one instance of such data, replacing the other instances with a reference that points to the stored instance. Thus, in the e-mail example above, one instance of the file attachment may be stored rather than ten instances, reducing the utilized memory space by about ten times.